We’ve seen snipers in the movies before, but they are usually supporting characters and we pay no mind to their techniques and solid control. Their purpose is frequently a surprise mechanism removing the bad guy out of nowhere right before our hero is about to be killed. Mark Wahlberg played a main character sniper in Shooter and Tom Berenger was one in a few awful films, but those were mass-market action fare. American Sniper is based on a real person, Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (Bradley Cooper, 2014's Guardians of the Galaxy), and his distinction as the most lethal sniper ever in the U.S. military. Director Clint Eastwood shows us the unimaginable grit and fortitude it takes a man to stare through a scope for hours on end waiting for that miniscule millisecond when his trigger finger decides to end a life. Screenwriter Jason Hall wrote American Sniper as a balancing act. On one scale are Chris Kyle’s four Iraq deployments and their accompanying firefights and explosions. The other scale, usually far outweighed, is Kyle’s wife, Taya (Sienna Miller, 2014's Foxcatcher), left alone on the home front to care for their two children and worry herself sick over Chris’s safety. She may also believe in Chris’s God, Country, Family mantra and the importance of his mission, but sometimes she wishes he would reorder his creed every now and again and focus on the family.

Watching Kyle attempt to discern who on the ground is friend and foe, the audience understands why he may put his family a bit too out of sight, out of mind. He is the protector. Early scenes show Chris as a young boy in Texas absorbing his father’s speeches about how you’re a predator, prey, or a protector. It was natural for Chris to perch above his fellow soldier and do his best to help get them home safe. In fact, he was so successful as the overseer; his fellow soldiers called him “Legend”. It is fascinating to watch Cooper as Kyle consciously control his twitches, fatigue, and breathing as he is the decider who must make the call to fire or not. If he’s wrong, he may be brought up on charges. If he’s right but hesitates, his friends go home in body bags.

Clint Eastwood effectively shows the Iraq insurgency was not the on screen warfare you are accustomed to watching. The two sides do not meet on the battlefield face-to-face. In Iraq, the insurgents ooze out of their hiding places after the American troops return to their fortifications. Any locals suspected of aiding and abetting the men in camouflage are subject to immediate extra-judicial punishments as determined by the local warlord. There is one gruesome scene I can barely think about involving a family accused of giving out militant names. The brutality inflicted upon them may make you nauseous as it involves a drill and a young boy. Kudos to Eastwood for displaying why the local populace is reluctant to aid the Americans, but good God man, that is one of the most awful scenes I have ever witnessed in all of cinema.

I also understand Chris has access to technology most of the grunts do not including a satellite phone to call home at will, but would you really call your wife while you are outside the wire and supposed to be on alert? Even more perplexing, would you call her during a firefight? The sound of her voice on the other end may give you some amount of comfort during one of the most stressful situations in your lifetime, but does Chris not consider what that sounds like on the other end of the connection? Spouses do their fair share of worrying about their loved one’s situation in the battle zone and you willfully decide to reach and touch someone while you’re supposed to duck and cover and return some fire? I didn’t read the source material, so I have no idea if Chris Kyle did this or not or if this was a Hollywood melodramatic invention, but anyone who has deployed to a war zone and goes outside the wire on a mission knows damn well you don’t pick up the phone and call home.

Even though Chris Kyle is not here to defend his story and claims, American Sniper thrust him into the news cycle again due to some of the unsubstantiated claims in his autobiography. Kyle writes he shot and killed two men in Texas who tried to steal his truck at a gas station. He said he travelled to New Orleans post-Katrina and shot dozens of looters and criminals with his sniper rifle. Kyle’s estate just lost a million dollar slander lawsuit to former Governor and fellow SEAL Jesse Ventura, who proved Kyle never punched him out in a bar. None of these claims has ever been confirmed and many suspect Kyle either stretched the truth or outright lied about them. However, Hall and Eastwood opt to skip these episodes and focus their efforts on Kyle’s time in the desert and his time attempting to sustain his relationship with his stranded wife.

The atmosphere in American Sniper is tense. Just like when Chris Kyle comes home from war, the audience does not breathe any easier back in friendly territory. Chris Kyle accomplished amazing feats in the Iraq War and it is a matter of fact that because of him, many more soldiers returned home than would have had Kyle not been there. Like his two previous war films, Flags of Our Fathers and Letters from Iwo Jima, Eastwood successfully tells the story of men altered by war, for better and for worse. It is about time stories about recent war heroes start showing up in movie theaters; it is also about time a quality one comes along showcasing a specialty often overlooked, the sniper.